In 1776 the passageway was doubled in length and reached across to the Rue l’Ecole de Médicine. Georges-Jacques Danton, a leading figure in the French revolution lived in the Cour du Commerce Saint-André close to the Rue l’Ecole de Médicine. Danton’s house together with that part of the Cour du Commerce was subsequently torn down to make way for the Haussmann development, the Boulevard Saint-Germain.

There is a piece of history in the Cour du Commerce that dates back hundreds of years before the passageway was created. Before leaving for the Crusades in the early 13th century, King Philippe-Auguste fortified Paris by building a thirty-foot high defensive wall around the city. The Cour du Commerce Saint-André is actually built on the site of the moat that surrounded this wall. The wall itself included thirty-four defensive towers and part of one of these towers survives today in the Cour du Commerce.

Un Dimanche à Paris is an elegant Salon de Thé and restaurant in the Cour du Commerce. But all is not what it seems.

Inside, amidst the tables, stands the remains of one of the defensive towers from the Philippe-August wall. Whilst Un Dimanche à Paris is a modern creation, it’s worth remembering that this tower was built somewhere between the years 1200 and 1215.

Beside the Philippe-August tower, Le Procope, the oldest café in Paris seems modern in comparison. It’s only been here since 1686!

It’s the rear entrance that’s in the Cour du Commerce; the front entrance is in the adjacent Rue l’Ancienne Comédie.

Francesco Procopio arrived in Paris and opened his first café in Rue de Tournon in 1675. He moved to the Rue l’Ancienne Comédie in 1686. Proving that location is everything, the Comédie Française theatre moved in across the street and Le Procope’s future was assured.

Further along the Cour du Commerce Saint-André from Le Procope we find N°8.

N°8 was the location of Jean-Paul Marat’s printing press where he published his revolutionary newspaper, L’Ami du Peuple, The Friend of the People. L’Ami du Peuple was a vocal advocate for the rights of the lower classes against those Marat believed to be enemies of the people. On 13 July 1793, Marat was murdered in his bathtub by Charlotte Corday. The last edition of his newspaper was published the day after his death. Charlotte Corday was guillotined on 17 July 1793 for the murder. During her four-day trial, she testified that she had carried out the assassination alone, saying, “I killed one man to save 100,000.“

The physician, Dr Joseph-Ignace Guillotin once lived here at N° 21 Rue l’Ancienne Comédie – a very different N° 21 than exists today.

Contrary to popular belief, Dr Guillotin did not actually invent the guillotine, that was down to one Antoine Louis. Dr Guillotine in fact opposed the death penalty, even though his name has become eponymous with it. As a member of the Assemblée Constituante, during a debate on capital punishment, Guillotin proposed that “the criminal shall be decapitated; this will be done solely by means of a simple mechanism.” The “mechanism” was defined as “a machine that beheads painlessly”. At that time, beheading in France was typically done by axe or sword, which did not always cause immediate death. Guillotin hoped that a more humane and less painful method of execution would be the first step toward a total abolition of the death penalty.

Nevertheless, it was here in the basement of N° 9 Cour du Commerce that Dr Guillotin carried out experiments using sheep to try to perfect the machine that beheads painlessly.

The Cour du Commerce Saint-André is a perfect example of the living history to be found in this city. It’s well worth a visit.

It’s amazing how you keep finding these places in the middle of the city with such great acoustics; barely any outside noise. From someone who lives in a “young” country I would still have to list the sound of people walking on cobblestones as in my top 5 favourite sounds.

Thanks Jay. Even in a city as old as Paris footsteps on the pavé always have a special ring to them. Finding places to record without outside noise is a huge challenge but they are there if you search hard enough.

Ha, I was just here today admiring this little alleyway, one of my all time favorite places in Paris. I even popped into Marat’s former printing press to pick up some herbs-de-Provence and olive tapenade!

Beautiful pictures and a well-told story about some of the amazing historical secrets packed into this tiny hidden street.

N°1 of this Cour du Commerce Saint André was living Georges-Jacques Danton since 1787 untill his death in 1794. There was this incription in the Official books of the town:Cabinet de M. d’Anton”. Today, the luxury french house Hayari paris takes place in this building

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About

This blog is dedicated to my recordings of the street sounds of Paris … and occasionally, to some other things too. I specialise in street recordings mostly in binaural stereo. I take my inspiration from the great twentieth-century street photographers who walked the streets seeking that elusive 'decisive moment'. For most of our history we have used artefacts, architecture, pictures and words to create a vision of our past. It’s only in the last thirty seconds or so on our historical clock that we have been able to capture and record sound. Almost all our sonic heritage has passed by unrecorded. That is why I, and many others, are dedicated to recording and archiving the sounds around us so that future generations will have the sounds of our time to explore, to study and to enjoy.